Travel and Lifestyle

Family F#@&ING Drama

You would think that family drama would be minimal or non-existent when there are a few thousand miles between you and your family, right? You would think we miss each other so much that there is really no room for drama.

Well, that’s not necessarily true.

The distance can make communication a little more complicated as messages can be misinterpreted. Also the message tone might come across the wrong way as this largely depends on the person reading it and on their current mood. Maybe I should stick to phone calls but it’s not often that I have a whole free hour to be on my phone.

On top of that you only get a limited amount of time together when you visit and the last thing you want is to have drama during your time off from work. There is no room for drama in a week’s holiday (or there shouldn’t be).

I believe that having such a limited amount of time available to share with your loved ones can be a real problem and even be the cause of family drama. Sadly a time that should be of happiness ends up being the cause of stress and anxiety.

Funnily enough it feels like the ones that get the most time with me are the ones that really show how unhappy they are with my time-sharing skills. They are the main source of drama. Am I failing at getting the right balance by being around too much? Is being around 8 out of 8 days not enough?

To be honest drama runs in my family and as I grew up around it I think I developed some kind of defense mechanism. This usually makes it look like I don’t care. Not true. I actually care and because I do and it hurts me I make the effort to step out of these situations. This is really just to protect myself and to avoid adding to the drama.

Might seem selfish but this is the only way I know to cope with family drama.